Saturday, January 4

VirtualPC 6 (MacInTouch Reader Report) Can somebody explain to me why Virtual PC 6 runs so much faster on my 500MHz Tibook with 1GB ram than it does on my 800 MHz iMac with 768Mb ram? I know there's more ram in the book, but come on, the iMac should have a 60% CPU advantage. It runs half as fast on the iMac as it does on my year and a half old PB, way too slow to get any real use out of it. Running 10.2.3 on both machines.



I think the answer to that is likely that the iMac has a significantly smaller L2 cache (256k vs 1mb), and no backside bus. Connectix has stated publicly on numerous occasions that Virtual PC's speed is affected by availablity and size of cache, and the more you have the better off you are. That's why, for instance, Virtual PC performs much better on my 667 (DVI) TiBook (which has an L3 cache) than it does on my roommate's original 667mhz TiBook (which has NO L3 cache).

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